Phytochemical profiling of Prosopis laevigata and Vachellia farnesiana leaf extracts

Natural products are a rich source of compounds with diverse chemical structures and bioactivities. For instance, chemotherapeutics like paclitaxel, which belong to the alkaloid and terpene groups, have been isolated from plant sources. The present study aimed to obtain bioactive crude extract and its fractions from the leaves of Prosopis laevigata and Vachellia farnesiana, and to determine their total alkaloids and triterpenoid content. The crude extracts contained alkaloids at concentrations of 621.64 and 379.84 mg AE g-1, and triterpenoids at concentrations of 335.60 and 364.72 mg UAE g-1, with extraction yields of 2.64% and 2.58% concerning dry weight (DW), for P. laevigata and V. farnesiana, respectively. Both extracts were fractionated using a chromatographic column, yielding eight representative fractions for each extract. In P. laevigata, fraction 4 exhibited the highest alkaloid content (53.03 mg AE g-1), while fraction 8 showed the highest triterpenoid content (69.93 mg UAE g-1). In contrast, V. farnesiana´s fraction 5 contained the highest alkaloid content (86.04 mg AE g-1), and fraction 2 had the highest triterpenoid content (88.37 mg UAE g-1). HPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS analysis of crude extracts revealed the presence of alkaloids from the cinchonine family, as well as 3-O-acetyl-16-α-hydroxytrametenolic acid, a cytotoxic triterpenoid. The identification of these bioactive compounds warrants further investigation into their cytotoxic activity against cancer cell lines.